


let it be

by joisattempting



Series: look over there it's a wild falsettos college au [6]
Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Piano, References to the Beatles, Slow Burn, featuring marvin’s tragic PIANO backstory, hand holding, i don’t know what this is at all, not to be confused with Marvin’s Tragic Backstory™️, oh and also feat cordelia because i love her, please give it a chance i know it’s a mess, this is just whizzvin soup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 18:39:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21213248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisattempting/pseuds/joisattempting
Summary: whizzer and marvin play a duet on the piano.





	let it be

**Author's Note:**

> emerges from the ashes  
hello! i’m so sorry i didn’t post for like a while lmao, school is kicking my ass, but i will try and post more often! 
> 
> anywho, i kinda like this? even though it’s a bit all over the place
> 
> enjoy! comments and kudos are greatly appreciated, they make me really happy :)

The apartment was a cemetery. With midterm week in full swing, nobody paid any mind to the days coming and going. Save for Whizzer and Marvin, nobody was around. The other residents of Shrek’s Swamp, in addition to Trina and Mendel, were scattered like sprinkles all across the school, starting exams, finishing exams, getting through the week. The third exam out of Marvin’s five had taken place that cold Thursday morning. Currently he nursed a Pepsi and a sour mood - his clothes, hair, and equipment having been drenched in the pouring rain outside. He only grew more irate as the drops pattered loudly and rhythmically against the large window panes. But he had one day. One more day. Two more exams. He could do this.

As for the photography major, his was being held in the evening. This was common for his schedule. He found that his focus and attention span peaked at that time. Not too early, so he was half asleep, yet not too late that he’d need buckets of tea to function. However, that didn’t mean he didn’t have his own struggles to overcome. Majoring in photography could be mistaken for a walk in the park, a piece of cake. And it was, for the overly-smart asshats and hipsters who thought they were “edgy”. But not for a kid who’d been late to walking and talking and couldn’t read until he was four. Not for a certain dyslexic student who pulled up the hoods on his jackets and lurked in the back of classrooms and was ridiculed by his professors and classmates for his untidy scrawl and misspelled words. Not for Whizzer Brown. 

People looked. Frequently, whenever Whizzer’s afternoon classes concluded before Marvin’s, he’d cross the school and wait for him on the bench outside the lecture hall. At three PM exactly, the double doors opened and an ocean of confused aspiring lawyers would lethargically stumble from the classroom. Even after a particularly hard class or an unwelcome derogatory comment, seeing Marvin file out of his lesson seemed to turn up the corners of his mouth. Smart, snarky, sweet Marvin, with those long, bouncy curls that made him look like some sort of poodle. Those circular brown glasses that matched his own the most cringe, yet endearing way. They’d smile and jokingly link arms, singing the Wizard of Oz as they walked. Despite the photography major’s best attempts to ignore it, people stared. They gawked at the two like they were animals behind bars. How was the photography major friends with the star law student? The debating master, one of the brightest kids in class...friends with one of them? Mind-boggling.

Whizzer sat down at the piano. He’d been revising for a good two hours, and his brain felt like one of Dee’s overcooked potatoes. Maybe it was another excuse to sneak glances at Marvin while he did his own work, maybe it wasn’t. Playing had always been a form of therapy for him, because he wasn’t someone who took grades with an exam board and practised daily. Just learned the songs he liked via sheet music or by ear, but more commonly the latter because reading and matching notes to letters was equally as befuddling as deciphering words in a textbook. Fingering the keys, Whizzer smiled. He liked this one. His mother taught it to him.

Marvin lifted his head. Pushing his glasses up his nose, he tilted his head to the side. “That the Beatles?”

Momentarily, Whizzer paused. “Yeah,” he smiled. And that was the end of the conversation. He didn’t want to admit it, but he wished he could talk to Marvin forever. His articulation, his way with words, how his voice contained the ideal mixture of authority and gentility that practically forced you to listen. Sometimes, if you trained your ears and listened out for it, there were the faintest traces of a Boston accent. It grew more prominent, however, when he was angry. One might mistake him, on a regular day, for a Midwesterner, like Whizzer. Push his buttons, and he’d start dropping G’s and H’s like crazy. A fascinating thing, Marvin’s voice. 

Shaking the thoughts from his mind, the photographer began to play again. Shifting all his attention towards the keys, he played quietly, so as to not disturb the indubitably stressed law major slumped over at the kitchen island. About a quarter of the way into the song, he found himself humming along to the music. This song in particular was an overflowing treasure chest of memories. Playing it for his extended family at Hannukah and Christmas, singing it with Cordelia at a talent show in the sixth grade (complete with dance moves that made every audience member visibly flinch). Let it Be by the Beatles was far more than a special song to Whizzer. 

Marvin shook his curly head, promptly hopping off the barstool he sat on and sliding onto the piano stool beside his friend. “It’s a C there. You’re playing a D,” he said softly, smiling. Placing his hand ontop of Whizzer’s, he ever so slightly adjusted his fingering. “There,” 

Why didn’t he let go afterward?

Briefly, their eyes locked, both of them being sucked into not-so-black holes of brown and blue respectively. “You play piano?” Whizzer gaped.

Marvin’s eyes went callous and spiteful for a nanosecond, but the photography major hadn’t missed it. Sure, he played piano. His brother, too. Hours and hours were spent in the living room, squinting at tear-stained sheet music, trying to outdo the Feldmans’ golden boy at one mere thing. Days were devoted to learning exam pieces, adding riffs and tricks to impress the examiners. And impress them he did, earning himself perfect score after perfect score. But little Marvin’s blood, sweat, and tears weren’t enough. No awards of his were present on the fridge or in pictureframes, just tucked away in a box under his bed, collecting dust. And even when his brother slipped up and scored lower, all his parents’ time and effort went into coaxing and helping their younger son improve. Sure, he played piano. But it wasn’t playing. In fact, it was the farthest away from playing you could get. “I used to,”

Whizzer ran a hand through his hair. “What made you want to stop?” he asked, brows knit together. 

Shrugging, Marvin attempted to appear nonchalant. “Mom and Dad,” he said, and Whizzer felt his intestines form tight, painful knots. 

He had been the first person the law student opened up to about what had happened, while it was more or less still happening. The screaming, the comparison, the eventual eating disorder, and it never got any easier on the ears. That same nauseating, ghastly feeling of culpability nestled in his stomach. It made Whizzer weep that, while his early life was filled with laughter and wagon-riding and exploring the world around him with his five doting older siblings, Marvin, nine months older than him, felt small and incensed and misunderstood because of his parents’ pedantic comments on the way he looked. 

“Do you want to play together?” was Whizzer’s next question. 

“I’d like that,” was Marvin’s reply. “I take the left side and you take the right?”

“Sure,”

It was the most wonderful sound Marvin had ever heard. Playing beside his friend didn’t stress him. No sheet music with stained ink was anywhere in sight. They were lost in a dense, lush forest of majors, minors, sharps, and flats, but lost together. Not trying to find a way out, but delving deeper. They made mistakes, but they laughed because it didn’t matter. The mistakes were the best part. And Marvin realised that raw, heartfelt pieces were thousands of miles better than the sterile, refined, perfect ones he’d been drilled on for years. 

“Honestly, guys, get a room,”

“Cordelia, what the fuck?”


End file.
